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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25348342">A Second Chance (Don’t Say Goodbye)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harmako/pseuds/Harmako'>Harmako</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What Could Have Been (Or What We Might Have Had) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Xenoblade Chronicles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little grief/mourning, Body Modification, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Implied Fiora/Shulk, Light Angst, Loss of Control, Meyneth is technically there, Out of Body Experiences, Spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles, Warning for a bit of violence, no beta we die like men</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:55:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,823</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25348342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harmako/pseuds/Harmako</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was then that the stranger’s words registered with her: <i>I hope that this body is to your liking.</i><br/>A body?<br/>That could not be right. Fiora did not have a body. Fiora was dead.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What Could Have Been (Or What We Might Have Had) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Second Chance (Don’t Say Goodbye)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>All I write is existential-crisis-inducing angst :"D<br/>Hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fiora was dead.</p><p>She had died at the hands—or claws, rather—of the Mechon, the brutal mechanical force that the people of Colony 9 had so foolishly forgotten. 
</p><p>They had been lured into a false sense of security, Fiora herself a victim of the carelessness, the belief that they had been safe.<br/>
She was made to pay for that carelessness. She had stared into the malevolent faced Mechon’s red, soulless eyes, felt its serrated claws pierce her body, tearing into her skin, ripping, splitting—</p><p>She was alone, now, in darkness. Alone with her thoughts in an empty void. Alone with nothing but her fractured, hazy memories; in a state of shock.<br/>
Everything flashed before her in pictures. Shulk’s screams, Dunban and Reyn’s terrified faces, the final moments before the Mechon’s blades had torn her cruelly from existence.<br/>
The all consuming <i>terror</i> that had paralyzed her, had made it hard to breathe.</p><p>Was this all there was? All there ever would be?<br/>
Was this what lay beyond the land of the living? An endless darkness, lost souls destined to relive the tragic ending of their lives forever, bemoaning their regrets? It seemed more like a punishment than anything else. Fiora could not think of anything she had done to deserve this fate. Even her carelessness, the carelessness of all of Colony 9, had come from a simple wish, an innate desire—a desire for peace. </p><p>She’d never been a believer of some <i>other place</i>, a life after death, or another heavenly world, but she’d never thought that there would simply be nothing, that this would be all that remained. A consciousness, her consciousness, cast from the realm of memory. Nothing but a ghostly presence in this pitch black, unforgiving emptiness. </p><p>There had been so much she hadn’t done, so much she would never do. Never again would she sit among the trees of Outlook Park, with Shulk, or Reyn, or even by herself. Never again would she spend her days hunting for Shulk in the winding streets of Colony 9, only to find him asleep in some absurd place hours later. She would never get to laugh as she and Reyn force-fed Shulk the vegetables he hated so much, and she would never get to cook again, for that matter. She would never see the day Dunban was healed, well enough to wield a weapon—only she prayed it would not be the Monado—again.<br/>
She would never get to tell Shulk that she—<br/>
No. There was no use thinking about that.</p><p>Fiora would never know what had happened to them. </p><p>Speared by the faced Mechon’s claws, thrown away to be picked apart by the smaller, weaker Mechon in her killer’s entourage, Fiora could only desperately hope that she had bought her friends some time. </p><p>She prayed that they were still alive.</p><p> </p><p>There was only silence for a long time after that. Blackness. A mind without a body, Fiora wondered whether or not she could sleep in this state, ease her mind, put her thoughts to rest, if only to be given <i>some</i> relief from the circles she was thinking herself in. </p><p>At least she had died protecting Shulk. Protecting her brother and Reyn. Protecting the ones she loved. </p><p> </p><p>All it took was that sorrowful thought, and the world exploded.</p><p>That was the only way Fiora could describe it.</p><p>The darkness was suddenly consumed in white, a blaze of <i>bright</i> when there had been only shadow, ignited by her thoughts alone. Like shards of glass falling all around her, sparkling and crackling, the suffocating blackness shattered. There was nothing but light. It blinded her, and she was convinced, if only for a minute, that she was dying all over again. Of course, she felt no pain. Everything in this world, if this void could even be called as such, was purely thought, only memory. Nothing tangible. She was here... but also not.</p><p>Fiora wanted to cry out, she wanted to shout and scream.<br/>
But she couldn’t make a sound.</p><p>She was forced to simply succumb to the tear-inducing brightness as her dark, colourless existence came to an end. </p><p>Tears.</p><p>Fiora was crying.</p><p>She was crying. How could she cry? She was <i>dead</i>. She had no body, no eyes to cry from. She was nothing but a broken consciousness.<br/>
Shock and panic consumed her momentarily, her thoughts spiralling as she slowly became aware of sensation. The intangible became the tangible, and once again, Fiora found that she could feel.</p><p>She could feel in a way that was not entirely right, as if she existed and did not exist at the very same time. As if she was alive but not entirely whole.<br/>
The shattered fragments of the reality she’d become used to, the endless dark, continued to rain down around her. She could not breathe. There was no way out. She cried, but she did not see. She could feel, yet she could not touch. She was dead, yet alive—stuck in a twisted limbo.</p><p>“Lady Meyneth.”</p><p>A voice.</p><p>All at once, the shards stopped falling. They became soft around the edges, and the whiteness, the bright, all encompassing light faded away. The last traces of darkness, of the void she had been trapped in, receded into the furthest reaches of her mind. The experience left her winded, disoriented and dizzy, or something close to it. </p><p>Fiora became aware of her surroundings slowly, cautiously, like a Bunnit emerging from its burrow in search of food. There was metal, she decided. A lot of metal. Walls of some sort. There was white, too. Silver, maybe. Not as bright and stabbing as the light she had experienced mere moments ago, but close enough that she wanted to shy away.</p><p>She wanted to shy away, to move, but she quickly came to understand that she could not.</p><p>“Vanea.”</p><p>Fiora spoke. She spoke, but she did not open her mouth. She spoke, but the words were foreign. They meant nothing to her. She did not understand. Everything felt <i>wrong</i>. She was not in control. This was not her.</p><p>“I hope that this... this body is to your liking. She was the most optimal vessel.”</p><p>Fiora wondered if perhaps this was all a dream. The Mechon had never attacked Colony 9, she was asleep at the dining room table, where she’d found herself so many times before, and was about to be shaken awake by Dunban and a half-hearted scolding that didn’t quite work out with how fond his expression was.</p><p>It was then that the stranger’s words registered with her: <i>I hope that this body is to your liking</i>.<br/>
A body?<br/>
That could not be right. Fiora did not have a body. Fiora was dead.</p><p>She wanted to know. She needed to know. Where was she? What was this place, a place of here and not quite here? This place of cold silver and unfamiliar voices... Desperation and fear clawed through her once again, and she wanted to shout and thrash. <i>Look down. Look down. I need to see. Look down. Please, just look d—</i></p><p>She looked down. </p><p>It shocked her, just momentarily, that she could look down. That she could look anywhere, for that matter. That this invisible force had permitted it. That she had a body. She must have a body, even if it did not feel like her own. Even if it did not seem to obey her command.</p><p>After the shock came another feeling:</p><p>Fear.</p><p>The body she looked upon, <i>her</i> body, sitting in some kind of silver and gold chair (or a capsule?), was not her own.<br/>
It was the body of a machine. Metal joints, white and gold limbs. Metallic fingers that she flexed even as she did not want to. A labyrinth of black, blue and golden wiring she could not even begin to understand. </p><p>Fiora was <i>Mechon</i>.</p><p>“My Lady… are you all right?”<br/>
The unfamiliar voice spoke again with some hesitation.</p><p>It occurred to Fiora that she was still crying. Tears were in her eyes, she could feel them, warm and salty. That, at least, brought her some comfort. She was not entirely machine, could still cry, could still feel.<br/>
Then… What was this? Who was <i>Vanea?</i> Who was this <i>Lady?</i> Where was she? Why did she have this body?</p><p>What was she?</p><p>The questions bubbled up inside of her, more and more of them, yet she could not open her mouth, could not get answers to any of them. She felt immobilized, trapped inside of her own body.<br/>
But then, suddenly, she sat up, even though she had not willed it.<br/>
She had the sudden sense that she was watching herself, almost through a lense, and could see herself examining the body before her.<br/>
An odd emotion overcame her, a feeling of <i>relief,</i> of resolve, soothing her mind and washing away the panic, the pain and the questions.</p><p>She realized something.</p><p>Fiora realized that she had a body. It was a Mechon body, a working machine, and it seemed to her that it was not entirely her own, but it was a body nonetheless. </p><p>She had been given a second chance. She remembered mere hours ago—or minutes, she wasn’t sure—remembered how she had given up, submitted herself to the void she had been lost in. She had been dead. She had let go of the hope, the hope that she would ever see the ones she loved again. </p><p>But maybe, just maybe, not all hope was lost. There was a chance, awfully small, <i>but still a chance,</i> that Shulk, Dunban and Reyn were alive, that her death had not been in vain. That she could see them all again.</p><p>The understanding came quickly, like a splash of icy water, and her confusion and panic slowly ebbed away. A calmness settled over her, and she was filled with sudden determination. Clarity she so desperately needed. </p><p>She opened her mouth to speak, and finally, it seemed as if the other presence, the other <i>thing</i> controlling her body, allowed her to do so. It seemed that for just a moment, their thoughts and words aligned.</p><p>“I am fine.”</p><p>Fiora was more than fine, she realized. Sure, she was scared. Frightened of the way she was now, of this <i>other</i> part of her, but could work with this, this foreign feeling, the unfamiliar body. She would not give up so easily. She understood that this other consciousness (this other person?) meant no harm. Not to her. She had felt that sense of relief, of conviction, of ideals that were not quite her own.<br/>
She began to wonder who this person was.<br/>
She would learn what it was that this other half of her wanted, and she would enlist its help in finding Shulk again.</p><p>She would take this miracle, this second chance that she had been given, and she would make sure it did not go to waste. </p><p>Fiora was alive.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading! Comments + kudos are greatly appreciated &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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